Cave discovery, I think, is a good way to qualify clients because it's quite an easy sell for the right client. I think they understand that if you do that right, it's going to take a lot of work. Your client shouldn't necessarily be the one who is scoping out that project. They're not the expert you are, so it really needs to be you. But if you want to do it right, can you really afford to do it for free?

Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week I'm joined by Laura Elizabeth. Laura brings over a decade of experience as a freelance web designer to the table. Laura's also the founder of Client Portal, a powerful WordPress plugin designed to streamline client communications, keeping all of your files, links, and deliverables in one professional, centralized hub. Today we're talking about paid discovery, why it's an absolute game changer for both agencies and clients, and how it doubles as a powerful qualification tool. We'll explore how implementing digital roadmaps can filter out low commitment clients, set clear expectations from the start, and establish a more profitable, strategic relationship. We'll also explore how small actions like a clear client onboarding email, setting expectations, or even following up regularly with clients can make a big impact, more than we even realized. From tightening up processes to boosting client satisfaction, we'll look at why these often overlooked details and transform your business and your agency. Now, before we dive in, I wanted to take 30 seconds to talk to you about today's sponsor, Wix Studio. Digital marketers, here are a few things you can do when you manage projects on Wix Studio. You can work in sync with your team on one canvas, you can reuse templates, widgets, and sections across sites, you can create a client kit for seamless handovers, and you can leverage best-in-class SEO defaults across all of your Wix sites. The list keeps on going. Step into Wix Studio to see more. I'm Johnny Flash. Stay with us. Hey Laura, how's it going?

Hey, I'm doing well. Thank you. How are you?

Great. Uh so good to have you on here and uh excited to talk uh about paid discovery and managing clients and all the different things. So um to tell everyone a little bit about your background because I think it's kind of unique in terms of uh doing freelance web design, figuring out there's certain problems that we all face as agency owners. Uh talk a little bit about that.

Yeah. So I started off as a freelance web designer a really long time ago now. Um and I did that for about 10 years or so. Um I then moved into becoming a course creator. Uh so I taught a design course. A lot of my clients were uh I worked with a lot of developers and they needed to learn, they wanted to learn how to do good enough design. Um, and I thought that would be a great thing for me to teach. Um and so I did a little bit of course creating. But then my big thing happened when I was speaking at a conference and I was talking about freelancing, and I was mentioning, you know, how to give your clients a more of an agency experience because I used to work at an agency. Um and I mentioned this portal that I'd created, and it was just for me and my clients, but it became really popular. And so I ended up um releasing it as a product. It was kind of like my accidental product. I never thought I would become a product creator of you know, founder of a software product, considering I'm a designer, not a developer. Um, but that kind of happened just organically. And I did that, I launched that in 2016, and um I went full-time on it pretty much uh from 2017 until now. So yeah, it's been pretty good.

That's amazing. I love it when that that happens. You kind of find this like spot that is a huge need. So when it comes to client portals, like all agencies, they have some kind of uh project management software, right? Like they're using ClickUp or Asana or teamwork and stuff. We all know that no clients actually want to log into our ClickUp or Asana or teamwork. I mean, at least most of them don't want to. Um, and so we try to like patch things together with like, I'll share this Google Drive with you or this Dropbox folder. And inevitably, like there's limitations there, right? Because it's it's it's okay for file sharing, but as soon as you need to share like links or other resources that maybe aren't just like a document, then it kind of breaks down. And and I think that's part of what your client portal solves, right?

Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, agencies, they um, you know, like you say, project management tools are really, really useful if you're an agency and you're working, you know, you've got um, you know, employees who you work with or contractors or people like that, but they're not so useful for your clients. And you don't always want your clients in the project management tool because you don't necessarily want them to see everything. You want to be able to speak freely, um, you know, that kind of thing. So client portals kind of something that you would use with really just your clients to give them only what they need to access, nothing else, nothing overly complicated. Um, because I found when I bec started freelancing, I tried to um use a project management tool like we were using in the agency. But my clients would just end up resorting back to email. So, you know, I tried to get them to go to the project management tool, keep the communication there, but they wouldn't. They'd use email. And interestingly, now I'm more on the other side of it and I tend to be a client a lot of the time. I now completely get it because I just want to use email. I don't want to go into a million different project management tools and have to learn them and figure out where do I leave this comment? Who do I tag? Like who's gonna be notified? What do I do? Um, so client portal just kind of assumes that your clients are gonna use email. Um, that's what's best for them, but they still need an area where they can access their deliverables. And like you say, URLs. I use a lot of Google Docs and Google Sheets and things like that. And these URLs get, you know, pasted in these really long email threads. They get lost. Then clients email you. Hey, can you send me that link again? Can you send me that link again? And you know, you think, can't you just bookmark it? But they don't. So it's kind of like solving that kind of very niche problem, which I thought just I had, but it turns out a lot of people have it as well.

Yeah, yeah. And so I think this is all great in terms of like making a good um client experience, right? They they have everything in one place, all that. Uh let's let's back up a little bit if we can, because I think that that's all that that's a challenge that all agencies and freelancers and stuff face. But let's back up even a little bit to like, I think what people really want is like, how do I get more of those leads? How do I qualify those potential clients? How do I uh, you know, kind of keep them within the guardrails, right? Because if we don't, then the client just tends to wander off and start taking control of the process and all this. And you're like, oh my goodness, how did we end up over here? So um talk a little bit about like some of the things that you do or have seen work well in terms of like qualifying clients without having to spend a lot of time and and kind of how to like really uh kind of enhance that part.

Yeah, so I've been really big on client experience really from the beginning because, you know, as I said, working in an agency, it was an in-person agency as well. Um they had a lot of, you know, they had a studio which looked really cool. And, you know, they'd we'd bring clients in and we'd prepare like buffets and you know, food and all this stuff, and we'd kind of like wine and dine them a lot. They had a really great experience. And, you know, for what they were charging, I thought, you know, uh and and what work was actually doing, because I would be the one often doing the work. I was kind of the lowest like junior designer. And I was thinking, they're really paying for this experience. Like that's what they're paying for. They could hire a freelancer like me, um, but they don't want to, they want an experience. So I kind of thought a lot about, you know, how do we bring that to the online world, whether you're an agency or a freelancer? You know, you can't really whine and dine clients in the same way um so much anymore. So yeah, I'm really big on client experience. Um, but really what I think it boils down to is just having a really solid process. Um, there's a few things you can do to really, you know, impress them and make yourself stand out, but um, really it comes down to having a really good process that you are confident in that you've done time and time again. Um, and as you say, like qualifying your clients from the get-go, I think is really important because that sets the tone for how you work and um you know how the whole process is gonna go. So um I just do it's it sounds quite simple things, but actually very few people do them. So things like uh creating reusable email templates in something like Text Expander, right? Sounds really, really simple. Um, but hardly anyone does it. So for things like um qualifying a client, for example. So when a client first comes to you, I would have an email template that goes out with I think it was about four or five questions that I really wanted to know the answer to to get a very quick gut feel as to whether they were a good fit or a bad fit. And these questions would be something like it was usually um you know, things like uh what's your budget and is it over X amount? Because I always wanted to know, do you meet the kind of bare minimum of the budget? I always wanted to know, are you the owner of this project or is there someone else we should be talking to? Because we've all been in that situation where you know you're you spend a lot of time with a client and you realize they're not actually the client, they then have to take that back to someone else. Um so these kind of qualifying questions um and these email templates just start, you know, it starts the whole thing off on the right foot. And I think um if you can show that you've done this before, that you know what you're doing, um, I think it really helps again with the the client experience. The client's gonna get a good feel for you. Um, you know, they're taking a risk on you, it's you know, they're potentially paying a lot of money. Um, they want to feel like you have got this, that you can lead them through the project. So um, yeah, I think you know, qualifying and having a really good process is is just really, really important.

Yeah, and I know you're a big uh fan or proponent of like paid dis what we call in agency Mavericks like paid discovery in terms of like, hey, don't just put all this time into a proposal um, you know, for free and then them decide like, oh, we're gonna go somewhere else, like pay for all that knowledge and expertise. So talk a little bit about what you found um works well for that or some of the things that you do uh as part of that.

Yeah, I think paid discovery for me was a real, it was a game changer. It was, it's it's so useful for both you and clients. And actually, paid discovery, I think is a good way to qualify clients because a lot of the time I haven't it, it's quite an easy sell for the right client because any client who's you know worked on projects before, um they will know the importance of really scoping out a project, really planning it. Um and I think they understand that that if you do that right, it's gonna take a lot of work. And actually, your client shouldn't necessarily be the one who is scoping out that project. They shouldn't be the one doing that because they're not the expert you are. So it really needs to be you. But if you want to do it right, can you really afford to do it for free? I mean, at the agency we we did a lot for free. Um, but we had you know junior members of the team doing that. But it was still a lot of work, it was still kind of, you know, I guess money down the drain. Um and when I first kind of heard about paid discovery, I thought, oh, who's gonna pay for that, right? But um yeah, I've actually found it's a really easy sell for the right client, and it it that in itself is a really good way um to qualify them because they just want to know what this project's gonna be. They can take the proposal. Um we actually do two kinds of paid discovery, so it would be you know, either scoping out a project or it would be more of a consulting kind of thing where we give them a roadmap of their where their problem, you know, their problems in their business and where we think they should go. Um so it's kind of like two different levels of paid discovery. Do we have a project or are we trying to figure out what the project should be? Um yeah, and we give it to them and yeah, it's just gone really, really well. I'm just such a fan. It's like something like I say, even though I'm on full pretty much full-time on client portal, we we still do a lot of paid discovery and a lot of we call it road mapping, um, you know, roadmapping projects. Um, just because it's such a great revenue stream, it's a great useful thing for us, it's super useful for clients and they absolutely love it. So yeah.

Yeah. And then I think I I mean, I just did one of these uh digital roadmap sessions with a client just the other week. And um I think it, you know, it was really they were like, oh wow, this is like what we've been needing in terms of like a plan to do their their marketing. Um, they're trying to figure out how to go, they've been old school and they're trying to figure out how to go more digital in 2025. Um, and so kind of having that all laid out, and and of course we're we're we're pitching along with that that we can implement the roadmap, you know, if they want to. Um that it just I think it was like really eye-opening for them. And it's a great, it's a great like um authority builder, right? With with you and the client because they see, okay, well, they know what they're talking about, they have a plan. We're not just gonna be kind of winging, winging whatever it is, the the website or the marketing or whatever the project is. Um, and I just think it's a great opportunity. What are some of the things that you've uh incorporated in your client process that kind of um help give it like a high-touch, personalized experience, you know, so that um they just kind of have that um, you know, great experience from the beginning?

Yeah, I think along with so, you know, we sort of talked a little bit about the email templates, you know, throughout. Um, but what I what I used to do when I did a lot of the bigger projects, um I found there was a big problem early on with clients who would micromanage projects. And I think that's one of those things when you work remotely, um, they don't really have transparency into what's going on, they might feel a little bit insecure or something like that. So um I really made check-ins uh something that was absolutely vital. And the amount of check-ins I do depends on the project. You know, if it was a project that was massive, I would do um an email check-in every Monday, which you know would sort of say, okay, this is where we are now, this is what we're doing this week, and this is what I need from you. And it would just sort of be bullet points. And the client knew because I told them at the start that every Monday they were gonna get this. Um every every client would get that on a Monday. And then on a Thursday or a Friday for the bigger clients, I would also do a call with them, you know, to show them that this is what we've done this week and get any feedback or anything like that. Um I wouldn't do that for all clients because that could get become a lot of calls, and I was really just I was really just one person. Um so I think stuff like that, I think, you know, again, it doesn't sound that flashy, but so few people do it that you know, I think it really does make you make you stand out. And just having a client who knows what they can expect, I think is really important. Um, and it just makes them trust you more and it makes them micromanage a lot less. Um so that was one thing that we did. And then um another thing, this is quite small, but we'd always send our clients a bit of a welcome gift when they first joined us. So um it used to be something like a gift card for a coffee shop. So when I was doing web design, I needed my clients to write the copy. Um and so you know, I'd that would be a really difficult thing to get them to do is to write the copy. They'd try and get the design done first. Can't do the design without the copy. So, you know, I'd send them like a gift card, I'd research their local coffee shops and send them a gift card and say, you know, go write your copy. Um and that was always a nice surprise. Um nowadays I love that.

I love that. That's a great idea.

Yeah, it's good. Uh nowadays we send them because we do slightly different, you know, consulting now. Um so I work with my husband and he's written a book on basically the thing we consult on. So now we send out his book to every new client. Um, and so we just send it to their house. Um and I think just stuff like that, you know, it's it's very small. Um, and that's the great thing actually about being remote, you know, to give your clients a good experience, you don't have to do as much as the in-person agencies in terms of wooing them and whining and dining. You can really do, I honestly feel like the bare minimum, and it's so much better than almost everyone else.

Love it. Yeah, and I think that it's those small touches that go a long way. And it's also just like doing what you say you're gonna do, keeping the comp communication open, like the follow-through is like a huge thing, right? Because there's a lot of agencies and different marketing people that can like they can talk to them in this pre-sales and this through the sales part, and then like shortly after the onboarding, it's like they don't hear from them, they don't know what's going on, you know, they thought it was gonna be this, but it's actually taking a lot longer, whatever it is. And so, you know, I think just by kind of like setting those clear expectations, obviously trying to underpromise, over-deliver, right? Um, and then keeping the communication going so that they're, you know, anytime a client asks us, hey, uh, you know, what's the status? When's this gonna be done, or whatever, that means we didn't probably communicate well enough or often enough, like what was going on, right? And so they just need sometimes they just need that reassurance. We're uh I'm personally in the middle of building a house right now, right? And so it's it's a lot of money, it's a big project that has to be managed. Like it actually has a lot of similarities to like marketing and and all the stuff that we do as agency owners, um, totally different, but at the same time, like very similar. And so, like, I do appreciate like the regular updates of what's going on, what's coming up next, what you know, what all those things, so that I'm not having to like ask for it, right? And I think those same things apply for us as agency owners.

Yeah, I think that's a really good um analogy because I have the same thing. Anytime we get work done on our house, there's so many parallels between what you do in an agency and you know what they do. We had something where we wanted some, like, you know, those built-in bookcases um in our living room. And, you know, we had a carpenter come around and he'd say, Okay, so what do you want? And we say, you know, built-in bookcase. And he's like, What material? What color? Like all this kind of stuff. And we're kind of like thinking, well, what do you think? Like you see this every you see houses every day.

Yeah, give us some choices to recommendations, right?

Yeah, it's very much like, and I find that with a lot of you know, people who do things with the house, you know, they just want you to tell them exactly what you want. Um, but the way I see it is that I'm thinking you're the expert, you know, advise me on what you recommend. I'll still make the final choice and I still might have a different opinion for you, but you know, show me that you're the expert here. And I think that's the same thing with what we do, you know, don't expect a client to know if they want an e-commerce website or whatever you do. They don't know all the different things that are involved necessarily in an e-commerce website, but you do. So you should be the one guiding them. Um and yeah, like I say, we find so many parallels between renovating houses and client work.

Yeah. And and we want to try to avoid, we don't want the clients coming to us with like, here's my list of all these things. Cause, like you said, they don't know, they're just going off of their previous web building experience or you know, something they saw somewhere. And so they don't even really always know like what to ask for, or the best way to do things. Like we've all at least I've gotten these RFPs where it's like they're asking for all this stuff, and you can tell they don't really know what they're talking about. They just like had they had a room of people that was all talking about what they needed, and they just made like this, they kind of threw up and made this list of all these features that they think that they want, and they're like, This is what we want. And you're like, Well, I don't know if you actually really want this. And did you think about this? And what about this? And you know, so they Want to they want, I think generally they want like that guidance, right? They want that safe pair of hands, that friendly advisor who's going to kind of like steer them in the right direction, not let them go too far off the reservation, right? Um, but still like give them options and help them like kind of make the decision, right?

Yeah. And when you become that person, you will they will be a client for life and a great source of referrals because if you can get to that point where they really trust you and they, you know, they'll be a walking billboard for you.

Yeah, and I think that's that's a good, I think that's a good uh point just in terms of, you know, if we do that wow job for the clients like throughout, and we are that friendly advisor and and stuff like that, then they should be referring their friends and they should be willing to write a testimonial and stuff. And if they're hesitant, then there was probably some points along the way where they had some some pain or some friction or some uncertainty that they weren't quite sure, you know, how it was gonna go or whatever, some maybe some things that didn't get resolved quite right. And so um talk a little bit about that just in terms of like getting those referrals and stuff. I'm a huge fan of of getting those reviews and those testimonials and stuff, but to tell me a little bit about your experience.

Yeah, so I think offboarding is really important and it's not something we often think about. It the the project just ends tends to fizzle sometimes. Um a lot of people do put a lot of effort into their onboarding, and I think you said earlier, you know, they'll do the sales process will be really great. And then when the project starts, it all kind of falls apart a little bit, and then the project ends, and then nothing happens. So I think with offboarding, you know, first off, you've just got to ask for feedback. Um, we would send just a Google Doc template with some questions um just about, you know, how the experience was, did they what could be improved, what did they like? And you know, they'd be worded in such a way that some of them would make really good testimonials. We wouldn't ask for a testimonial, we'd ask for feedback, both good feedback and bad feedback, because we want to learn from the bad feedback and we want to use the good feedback for a testimonial with their permission afterwards. Um so we would do that. And then one of the questions would also be um something like Um, well, is there anything else that what do you what do you need to do next? What are your plans next? And we try and figure out if there's anything else we can help them with. Um and another one would be um, is there anyone else who you think would really benefit from working with us? You know, would you be willing to make a referral? Yeah, and it's just asking that question, and you know, a lot of the time there is someone. Um so that's like a really good thing to have baked into your process. You know, you write this document once and you send it to all your clients after the project. You get so much good feedback. Um and then the other thing is having a you know, a repeated reminder to remind you to reach out to your clients in the future and just ask them, is there any more? Do you have anything you need help with? Um, is there anyone who you know you think would be a good fit to work with us? Um and just, you know, not too often, but periodically reach out to them. Um and the way we track that, it's really simple. We don't have a fancy CRM, but we just use a spreadsheet um to just make sure that we make a note of every single client or potential client um, you know, when we last contacted them, any notes. And that gives us an idea of when we next need to contact them. And you just kind of bake that into your process of, you know, asking for more work, being proactive, asking for referrals. Um, and it becomes really easy. And you, you know, it just uh yeah, it just kind of runs like clockwork.

Yeah, I love that. We we do something very similar. Um, and I was just taking notes of like, oh, we need to, we need to ask that question there because we we ask it kind of separately later, but we have just like a form on our website that's like kind of when the project finishes, you know, where they fill out like how did it, how did the project go? What did you love most about the process? What was the hardest part? You know, is there anything that we could have done better? And then we do ask the thing that you said, what's the next big thing that you're trying to do in your business? Because we want them to say, oh, you know, I I need to get my social media better, or I need to do my email marketing and and or whatever those things are that we can that a lot of times can help with, right? Um, and so it's kind of good to know like where what they're thinking of next. And I love the question of like, you know, who else do you know that could benefit from our services or whatever as a as a question? I think that's really great. Um, and I think if they do have a great experience and you've communicated regularly and all of that, like they should be willing to leave a review. And we always point people to Google because I feel like Google's controlling so much of the search right now that like if I can get that review on my Google business profile, I I can still use it on my website as a testimonial or you know, in other things, but I've got it there and kind of hopefully Google showing that and prioritizing our business and stuff like that. So I think there's there's a lot of like cross-use you can get from those reviews and those testimonials, and then just staying in contact with them, like you said, so that you can get those referrals and stuff. Great. Well, um, anything, any kind of closing thoughts here uh in terms of like the client uh, you know, relationship, the process, um, anything with the portal that we might have like overlooked that you think is uh helpful for agency owners? Uh this this is really great. I love this stuff.

Yeah, I think honestly, just um spending what I always recommend people do if they don't feel like they have a good process, is just try and take a day away from your business and just spend some time really figuring out what your process is currently. You know, so how do clients contact you? Is it through a form? Do they call you? Like do they email you? Um and just kind of think through all the different um all the different things that happen in your project and try to template out some of it. So, you know, again, email templates is is a really good one. And actually a good thing that I always like to mention is um write email templates for difficult conversations when you're not in the middle of dealing with a difficult situation. So for example, if a client's not a great fit, have a couple of emails that are ready to go that politely decline. Um because sometimes we're too scared to decline. So we end up kind of, you know, leading them on a little bit because we just putting them off or leading them on or whatever, right? They seem nice and it's like hard. Um, and then another one of, you know, scope creep, you know, if if if the client is pushing for more stuff, um, I always think when that happens in the moment, we tend to think the client's trying to take advantage. But I actually don't believe that most clients are trying to take advantage. So write a response of, you know, a really positive response to when you get a request that's out of scope that's like, yeah, that's a great idea. Um, it'll be an extra blah or, you know, something like that. But write it, write those difficult emails that have happened to everybody when you're not in the moment. Because what happens when you write them in the moment is that people tend to revert to very corporate-sounding speak that's like really passive, aggressive, extra polite that's you know, not really you can just you can like feel the anger from the email. Um so you know, things like that. Just try and get as many emails as you can kind of written out. Um, and then again, just write out your process and think, is there anything that I can create now that I can reuse with my clients? So, you know, something like a very quick getting started guide, which just answers some frequently asked questions, maybe has like a diagram of your process or something like that. Um can you create the onboarding and offboarding questionnaires? Um, is there anything else you can create? Um, so you know, another example is if you want to create in the future a case study for your client, is there anything that you can create to make it so you're collecting the right information for the case study throughout the project? So maybe you'd send them a questionnaire at the start of the project, halfway through and at the end. And from those three questionnaires, you've built out a case study. Um, you know, what can you do now that you can just reuse over and over again? So I always recommend people just try and take a day out. I know it's really hard, um, plan it out and just try to get as much reusable as you can. And that in itself will give your clients just the best experience, and they will, you know, like we said earlier, be a walking billboard for you and come back to you time and time again.

Love it. Love it. So good. So good. Laura, thank you so much for your time and it's great to connect with you and love what you're doing.

Thank you so much. It was great being here.

Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast, and a huge thanks to Laura for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about Paid Discovery or Laura's client portal, check out the links in the description. Okay, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Johnny Flash. Let's get to work.